Chapter 20
DHOMHES
Sereya opened the door with a cup in her hand.
“That was quick.”
“Are you complaining?”
“I'm deciding whether to pretend I hadn't been listening for you.”
He had meant to give her a brief warning, confirm the guard arrangements, and leave her to sleep. Instead he stood looking at her bare feet, at the loose fall of her hair, at the small smile she hadn't yet taken back.
“Don't,” he said.
Her smile grew. Then she looked at his face more closely and stepped aside.
He waited until the door shut behind him.
“I have confirmed that Roemary is working with the male who attacked Adryel.”
Sereya lowered the cup.
He showed her the captured male's image. Burk. Then he told her about Roemary's visit to his cell. No imitation of her voice this time. No amusement to make the information easier to hear. Sereya listened with her fingers wrapped around the cup and her eyes on his.
“What happens now?”
“The duty authority has the recording and my request for detention.
The Alliance representative has challenged the search and wants the original recording authenticated.
Until that's settled, she stays in the receiving rooms under escort.
No private visits, no access to the guest wing.
She can ask the guards for counsel. We're watching for anyone who tries to reach her.”
“And me.”
“Yes.” He disliked having to say it. “She watched you with Adryel, and she has watched us together. She may already suspect you warned her.”
“I'm having her outgoing messages stopped at the refinery relay. Her Alliance comm has a fallback connection; I need that checked too. Until then, don't assume she can't reach anyone. And it won't bring back anything she's already sent.”
Sereya set the tea down before it could spill.
“She's going to be very angry.”
“You don't have to receive her. If she calls, send it to me. If she comes here, the guard turns her away.”
“And if she says something about who I used to be?”
He moved closer. “Then you tell me what you need to tell me so I can help. She doesn't get to decide whether I believe you.”
She looked down at the space between them.
“I keep thinking there's a version of this where I handle her well enough and she stops.”
“Has she ever?”
Sereya shook her head.
“Then we will try something else.”
“We.”
“I can repeat it, if you like.”
She put her hand on his chest, in the place where he'd held it earlier. This time she found it herself.
“I like it the first time.”
He covered her fingers. Heat spread under her palm, deep enough to make his next breath catch. She was here, leaning into him, and he had to leave her again. His hand tightened before he made himself ease it.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“So should you.”
“I'm considerably less reasonable.”
“I've noticed.” She leaned forward until her forehead rested against him. “Will you tell me before you go anywhere?”
His hand settled at the back of her head.
“Yes.”
She stayed there for three breaths, perhaps four. He counted because he had work waiting, and because he wanted to remember the exact length of time she chose to lean on him.
When she drew back, he let her.
At the door she caught his sleeve.
“Dhomhes. Being frightened isn't the same as wishing you hadn't come.”
He looked at her.
“I thought you should know,” she said.
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, then turned it and pressed his mouth to her palm.
“I do now.”
His security lead met him outside the operations room with a staffing record.
“Burk came over with the Galactic Alliance staff. He took another staff member's place. The transfer list carried that identity all the way onto our transport.”
Dhomhes looked at the boarding record. They had brought Adryel's attacker with them. He hadn't needed to know where they would go, only to stay among the people they were trying to protect.
“Who confirmed him?”
“The boarding team used the Alliance staff list. We're checking it against the original crew records now.”
“Suspend the provisional passes. Recheck every name against those records. Put refinery supervisors beside the guards. Someone who knows our own crew by sight. Hold pending maintenance orders until we've checked them too.”
“I'll have the service bays searched,” the lead said. “Anyone already on site stays accounted for.”
The lead opened the service-deck plan and began assigning the bays to search pairs. Dhomhes waited until every bay had a team beside it.
“And Roemary's escort stays with her. Two guards for any contact with another volunteer, in the receiving area, only if that person agrees. Nobody takes her near Sereya's door. Any threat ends the conversation and goes straight to the duty officer.”
“Block her outgoing comm traffic at the relay, including the Alliance fallback,” he added. “Route requests for counsel through the guards. She doesn't get to warn whoever is waiting for her.”
“The cell corridor?”
“Closed again. Two guards inside the block. Two at the access point.”
“No transfers without your voice confirming them,” Dhomhes said. “No maintenance visits. If a pipe bursts, Burk gets wet until we have an escort.”
He could remember giving Stron his knife on the landing pad. That quick, terrible calculation in his friend's face before he ran.
The refinery had been his promise of safety. He intended to find every person who had helped break it.
His comm showed several messages, including the notice of Wyleigh and Oleave's arrests that Stron had relayed during the chaos of the arrival. Khalzin had now sent the fuller account and access to the chamber recording.
He sent Hawn the promised landing update, then opened Khalzin's report. The old male deserved a call; Dhomhes needed first to understand what had happened in the chamber.
On the chamber recording, Khalzin traced the hologram to his mother. The accounts implicated Oleave. As the guards approached, Oleave seized Janae and put a blade to her throat.
Dhomhes gripped the desk. He knew she survived.
“You need to stand down, Oleave. This is over. How did you think this was going to end?”
Khalzin's recorded voice was steady. Dhomhes knew what that steadiness cost him.
“You have no right, just because you wanted to try something to destroy our way of life!” Oleave snarled back. “Now we have to eradicate the off-worlders. Erase them from our planet and start again. Like the Light.”
“That is not what the Light dictates,” Khalzin said. “You cannot justify killing a living humanoid because she's not from here.”
Aukrae spoke from his seat.
“The problem with your argument is that she's Kantenan, at least partly. So, if you killed her, you would murder a Kantenan. And that would condemn you to the Dark.”
Even the guards paused.
“Baron of Information Aukrae, what do you speak of?” Speaker Fowles said.
“While everyone was conversing, as my habit, I scanned the Gol-Vett and his mate when they came in.
My scans revealed that the Gol-Vett's mate carries the Kantenan genome. She is very much one of us. If Oleave kills her, it is intentional murder of a Kantenan and that would destroy his opportunity to live in the Light.”
“You are lying!” Oleave snarled.
“I show my scans to you and anyone else who wishes to dispute them.”
The Baron sent the data. Oleave's attention shifted just enough.
Janae drove an elbow into him, stamped down on his foot, and slammed her head back. She broke free and ran straight to Khalzin. This time the guards reached Oleave before he could take anyone else with him.
Dhomhes released the desk and stopped the recording.
Then he called Khalzin.
His friend answered from a chair with Janae asleep against his shoulder. He held a finger to his lips before Dhomhes spoke.
“I've watched it,” Dhomhes said softly. “Are you both all right?”
Khalzin looked at Janae. “She's sleeping.”
“Tell her I called when she wakes.”
Dhomhes nodded. He gave him the news about Roemary and Burk. Khalzin's expression hardened.
“There's something else,” Khalzin said. “Before we reached the chamber, Janae received a broken transmission through the communicator Graecey gave her. A voice asking for help. Janae believes it was Graecey.”
Dhomhes sat forward.
“From where?”
“We couldn't locate it. It failed before she could get an answer. She called back, but there was nothing.”
“Send me the device details. Everything it retained.”
“You think we can find them from it?”
“I think my search team needs to know there may be someone alive to find.”
He wanted to ask why he was only hearing this now. He looked at the sleeping woman, remembered the blade in the recording, and asked instead for the time of the call.
Khalzin gave it to him.
Dhomhes sent an urgent update to the commander on the burn slope. Then he called Hawn again.
The old male answered before the second signal.
“Tell me.”
“There was a distress call.”
Hawn closed his eyes.
He gave Hawn everything he knew: Janae believed the voice was Graecey's; more than one person needed help; there was no location and no confirmation of Fiviel's condition. Hawn listened without interrupting.
“But someone called.”
“Yes.”
“Keep the channel open.”
The next work shift began without sunrise. Workers changed places beneath the same orange lamps.
Sereya sent him a message.
I managed to get some sleep last night.
Did you bother?
I got some.
Truly?
The couch is not comfortable.
You must sleep. You do no one any good if you’re not rested.
I will try.
Good.
He put down his comm and managed two hours on a couch in the operations room. When he woke, there was food beside him and the recording examiner's signed return. The original and its secured copy matched. He sent both to the duty authority, with another demand for a decision.
He forwarded Sheira's message about Tivek's attestation to Ruthak, with a copy to his brother. His father could take the union record to Havent. Dhomhes returned to the custody request.
By the time the lamps changed for the evening meal, the detention authorization had arrived. His lead brought it with the relay supervisor's checked return: the block held on both the ordinary route and the Alliance fallback connection.
“Take Roemary quietly. Secure her communicator. The block on transmissions stays until the device is in evidence. Send Sereya word of the relay check now, and tell her as soon as Roemary is in custody.”
The lead touched his comm.
An alarm cut across his acknowledgment.
Holding block.
Medical assistance required.
Then a second voice, urgent and breathless, broke onto the channel.
“East guest corridor. We need support.”